Economist believes taxing women less could help everyone

MINNEAPOLIS — Want to reduce the overall level of income taxes and see more women taking home paychecks?

Lower income-tax rates for women while raising them for men, according to Harvard University economist Alberto Alesina, who calls the idea "discrimination, the good kind."

"The female tax rate should be no greater than about 80 percent of that of males and possibly much less," Alesina and a co-author wrote in a recent paper that's grabbing attention among those concerned about the persistent gap between the sexes, both in work-force participation and average earnings.

The provocative notion hasn't taken long to draw skeptics, who doubt whether politicians ever would — or should — follow the advice.

Alesina and Andrea Ichino of Italy's University of Bologna argue that tax codes in the United States and around the world already apply different standards to all manner of people — the single and the married, for example, and families with children and those without.

At last count, 73 percent of U.S. men had jobs or were looking for work.

In contrast, 59 percent of women were in the labor force.

While many factors affect a woman's decision to work or stay home, multiple studies have shown that part of the explanation is that women are often more sensitive to changes in tax rates than men.

In other words, if they believe they'll be able to keep more of the wages earned outside the home, they're more likely to take a job or retain the one they have rather than leave the work force for family or other reasons.

Alesina and Ichino conclude that a small increase in income taxes for men would finance the larger cut in income taxes for women because as more women chose to work, they'd pay more as a group in income taxes.

They project that the overall tax burden would decline as income-tax rates on women fall more sharply than income tax rates on men rise.

Married men also would benefit from the change, Alesina contends, since they would share in the extra income and lower tax rate on the earnings of their wives.

"Single men may not be too happy about it," Alesina conceded. "But you can't make everybody happy."

The economists argue that their ideas are aimed at current social goals in the United States and throughout the developed world.

"These effects are consistent with the stated goal of affirmative-action policies geared toward correcting discrimination and inequities in the labor market against women," Alesina and Ichino wrote.

Lowering income-tax rates on women would be a more efficient way of bringing women into the work force than anti-discrimination policies imposed on business, in their view.